Viewzi – another visual search engine.

A new visual search engine called Viewzi was recently released. Viewzi opens up to a clean interface with a search box. When you enter a term your results page looks like this; 

The search term I used was deforestation and 15 possible windows presented themselves for opening. Some less useful than others.

Search Engines

I have been working with year 7 students, trying to improve their searching strategies. Most of them have been interested in improving their expertise. After reading some blogs, especially  Lucacept, I have been very interested in the following.

The first is Surf Canyon, which is a very useful little tool to help the searcher drill down to find other possible relevant sites. Working with the kids in classes they do not usually go past the first page and I rarely look beyond 2 or 3 myself! Let’s face it, we are all busy and time poor! Once you download the tool (which takes very little time) you see a bullseye icon appearing beside the hits you have received for your search. If you click on the icon you see up to 3 other search results that Surf Canyon recommends, based on the content of the search results. It also tells you on what page the search result was found on. When I searched “Tropical Rainforest”, part of what I received can be seen below. I have done a few searches and it looks to be one that I will use with the students when instructing them on internet searching.

 

The second one is called SearchMe. It is a very visual search engine and had me fascinated as I searched using it

Educating teachers about Web2.0

In a few weeks I will have to give a presentation to teachers about Web2.0. I will have about an hour to make my case as to why they should get on board. These teachers all have different needs and expertise with technology. I am trying to decide on how to approach it and, as they all have notebook computers, I thought that I would show them some useful tools that are not difficult to use and let them play to increase they familiarity with each of the tools.

There are many tools that we can use to encourage our students. They are varied in their level of difficulty and can tap into the many and varied ways our students prefer to learn.